


A Pirate's Life For Me

by Seiberwing



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Brief Lewis Snart but not much, Childhood, Family Feels, Halloween, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lisa Snart Appreciation Week, Sibling Love, Siblings, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 21:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7123135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Len takes his baby sister out for her first heist. Lisa dresses for the job she wants, not the job she has. </p><p>Written for both Day 1 (Snart Family Feels) and Day 2 (Childhood) of Lisa Snart Appreciation Week on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pirate's Life For Me

**Author's Note:**

> Between this and my Tyrell Badd+Kay Faraday Yatagarasu II fic over in my Ace Attorney section I'm starting to wonder if I have a weird addiction for fics about loving familial relationships between jaded surrogate older fathers and excitable preteen girls who steal things together. Whoops.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

“I’m a pirate.” After a drunken, glass-eyed silence from her father Lisa finally added, “Because it’s Halloween, dad.”

“You look more like a hobo,” Lewis grunted. Lisa had taken a light flowered scarf and tied it around her waist and her hair was held back with a red bandanna. A long-sleeved brown shirt that had long grown too small for her in the arms had been hacked with a pair of scissors to make it seem appropriately ragged. Hanging from the scarf was a plastic sword she had quietly obtained from a costume store with at a five-finger-discount, and a cheap clip-on hoop earring purchased the same way completed the ensemble.

“I’m going trick-or-treating,” Lisa insisted, holding up an empty tote bag in the hopes that _somehow_ the idea would force its way through his beer-soaked brain. Lewis made another grunt and returned to dividing his attention between the TV and a can of beer.

“Fine, whatever. Just don’t get abducted by some pervert weirdo while you’re out there.” He waved her off, and Lisa saved her big grin for when she’d stepped out of the house.

Not a lot of kids trick-or-treated in this part of town. Usually their parents stuffed them into minivans and drove them to the upper middle class neighborhoods, where candy was more abundant and walking far safer. much to the annoyance of several wealthy citizens concerned about parasitic poor kids. Lisa stopped at a few houses and delivered her perky trick-or-treats announcements in exchange for a handful of Skittles packets and Kit-Kats, until a banged up white sedan slowed to match her pace and started cruising down the street next to her.

Lisa gave the man at the wheel a glare. The black-clad man at the wheel scowled back.

“Dad said don’t get in a car with a weirdo.”

“Only weirdo I see here is you,” the man fired back.

One set of piercing eyes, separated by fourteen years from the set in the car and united by some very kindly genetics, stared down the other. Leonard was the first to flinch and break into a cocky grin, leaving his little sister to follow afterward.

“The earring’s a nice touch,” Leonard said as Lisa swung into the car next to him. Lisa barely had any memories of the time when Len lived at home but the ones she kept were some of the most precious in her collection. Len would pretend to be the captive prince in need of rescuing or obligingly bow his head to be executed for treason against the crown before giving her a ride around the backyard on his shoulders. He liked it when she was happy. 

There weren’t many people willing to say that.

“So you’re dressed up like the one in the movie?”

Lisa settled into her seat and dragged down the seatbelt across her chest before Len had a chance to get on her case about it. The car itself was functional but not particularly attractive, with crumbs in the seat cushions and a faint scent of something regrettable that had recently soaked into the fabric of the footwells. The glove compartment had a gun in it, which she was strictly not allowed to touch until she was fifteen. “Uh-uh, I’m Anne Bonney. Elizabeth Swann was dumb and kept getting kidnapped. Also Anne Bonney was real and didn’t get married in the end.”

“Hard to be dumber than that.” Lisa’s opinion would later soften towards Elizabeth as future films in the Pirates of the Caribbean enhanced her swordwomanship and backstabbing skills, but the marriage was still a bad move. Wearing a white dress and having kids didn’t light a candle to a life of cutting throats and stealing jewels with Mary Read and Jack Sparrow, who would be your close friends forever and maybe kiss you sometimes.

Lisa kicked her feet excitedly as they left the neighborhood and headed south, towards the mansions of people so rich that they could hire armed guards to keep unwanted children from getting to the doorbell in the first place. She’d been begging Len to take her out for what felt like years and finally, _finally_ she was going to get to go on a job.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Len.

“You know the plan. You made the plan.”

“I want you telling me the plan again. Your part, my part, all of it.”

Lisa huffed and recited the steps of the heist like they were a school presentation on world history. She’d written them down and gone over them every night, every morning, and then in her head during lunch until even her dreams were reciting the lines back to her.

By the time she’d finished Len had stopped the car at the bottom of a steep hill that stretched up physically and metaphorically to the dwelling places of the one percent. “And if it goes south?”

“If I’m outside, I run as far away as I can. And if they catch me inside, I was in the house because some big kids were bullying me and I needed to hide. If they get mad, I cry a lot.”

Lisa shed sash, sword, and earring, and dutifully put on the little mask that Leonard had brought for her A full balaclava would look a bit odd, but on Halloween no one blinked at a child in a costume. “Can we go in now?” she whined, looking up eagerly at the target mansion. It lurked behind a massive iron gate and then a set of thick hedges that ringed the white walls all the way to huge doors carved with peacocks. 

Len’s hand settled on her shoulder. “You have to be patient, Lisa. If you’re not patient, we get caught. We get caught…”

Lisa’s fingers ran over her wrist. The words BOTTOM LEFT, WHITE TRELLIS, RED were written on it in large letters, and also in red marker to hammer the final point home. Red, or everything would be ruined. “No diamonds and you have to go back underground again.” Or in jail. She wasn’t going to say that part because if he went to jail it would take him a long time to get out again, which meant the Plan got pushed back and she might have years more to stay with her father. Lisa didn’t know if she could put up with years of Lewis Snart.

“Right.” Len pulled on his ski mask. “Now, what’s step one?”

Step one was the fence. Lisa had eaten half-portions of dinner for two weeks over this part, just to make sure she’d stay skinny enough to get through the bars. (Len hadn’t asked her to, but she’d had a nightmare about getting stuck and decided not to risk it for the sake of an extra handful of chips.) She waited in the hedges for Len’s signal and then wormed her way through it, quick feet crossing the lawn to the garden shed behind the house.

Step two, the sprinklers. Lisa bit her lip in excitement as she thumbed the bottom left button near the circuit breaker and heard the cursing of the security guard by the gate as his newspaper was soaked. She took off running towards the trellis at the back wall, its slats hung with thick pink bougainvillea the color of neon markers, and huddled beneath the rose bushes that stung at her exposed hands.

Step three, wait for your ride. Lisa pictured the way Len had moved her toy figures around a sketched diagram of the house the last time she’d visited his hideout. Here came the pudgy T-rex to turn off the sprinklers, while Catwoman circled around to wait for Bagheera the Panther to scale the gate and circle around the other way to meet her.

She was doing good. So good and they’d make so much money. Len came to huddle beside her and she gave him an eager wave. Thumbs up? Yes, thumbs up from Len too.

Step four, up we go. Lisa hung tight to Len’s shoulders as he climbed up the creaking trellis the to the balcony, and the balcony to the second floor. Her legs dangled freely and he hissed at her to maybe stop kicking him in the kidneys.

“This is the best, Lenny!” she whispered. “I want to do this all the time!”

“We’re not even inside, Lisa. Kudos a bit later, mission now.”

Lisa set her face firm when her feet hit the ground again. Len was right. She’d be a Mature Thief Woman Adult about this, just like Catwoman. (Maybe Len would let her have a cat once they ran off to live together. She’d steal an extra big diamond to pay for it.)

Step five, quiet feet. Lisa crept along at Len’s heels as they made their way across the thick Oriental carpeting in the study. It was hard not to stare at the lush furniture and thick gold light fixtures, so different from the sort of trash Louis thought was good enough to decorate his dirty home with. For a thief with high aspirations, Lewis took remarkably bad care of his own living area.

Step six, down. Down the spiral staircase, delicate step by delicate step, and across the sparkling white marble of the front room to another set of stairs taking them even lower. Lisa held the flashlight and watched as Len put his lockpicks to smooth use popping the basement door open. She’d be smooth like that, someday. No door would keep her out. She’d steal so much money that she could buy a mansion like this and sleep in a different bedroom every night. Then she’d buy another one next door just for Len so he could come over to visit her every day, and his best friend Mick could set all the fires he wanted in the backyard, and she’d have an entire menagerie of obedient thief cats roaming the hallways with jeweled collars and soft fur.

Lisa had put an inordinate amount of time into devising a proper phantom thief nickname for the newspapers to use, too, but she was stuck on how she’d get the press to know they were supposed to use it.

Len made one final twist of the lockpicks and the lock clicked open. Below, the basement looked less like decadence and more like some of the bars Louis had taken her to (but cleaner and with fewer pictures of mostly naked bored-looking women). There were racks of alcohol bottles and cigar boxes behind a small bar, and an opulent pool table next to a set of plush armchairs. Len ran his fingers along the back of the pool cue rack and found the latch for the hidden door, opening it to reveal another room lined with lockboxes.

“Step seven,” he muttered, and crouched to let Lisa stand on his shoulders. She put the wirecutters he handed her between her teeth in proper pirate fashion. Her heart was pounding as she looked down at the pressure sensitive floor, then refocused to look back up at her mission.

Step seven, the balancing act. Len rose and leaned forward, suspending himself out over the floor as his fingers clutched the doorframe. He gritted his teeth as Lisa carefully stood and reached for the ceiling, nudging aside a tile that hid the security system’s wiring.

Okay. Okay. Lisa put a careful foot on her brother’s head and boosted herself higher until she could cling onto the exposed water pipe. Any other partner would have been too heavy and the ceiling would have given way beneatht hem. Lisa was just small enough for the framework between the tiles to bear her weight.

Step eight, red. Red red RED make sure it’s red. Lisa bit her lip as she negotiated the cutter blades into the thick mass of wiring and zipties that led down to the floor sensors. She did a final check of her wrist, and a final check of Len’s ice-calm face, and then a final check of her racing heart. As she squeezed she heard the tiniest noise of a snip, and then the silencing of a hum she hadn’t even noticed until its absence. Lisa let out a breath and looked down to give Len a thumbs up.

Len beamed. There was no hesitation in his stride as he stepped out onto the pressure-sensitive floor. Total trust, rewarded with more silence.

Step nine, keep a watch out.

Lisa gave the door a firm staredown as Len went to work on the safe. She was a good lookout and smart partner. Then the diamonds glinted out of the corner of her eye, and step nine went right down the garbage chute. Lisa shifted in position to stare agog at the beautiful jewelry Len was pulling from the safe. There were racks and racks of necklaces and rings, for what Len called their owner’s ‘special lady friends’, and a few gems that were as big as her widening eyes.

Some were uncut, others were encircled in gold (so much beautiful gold) that made them look like little flowers or the bodies of chubby fish. Other items were old and dingy, but Len said the owner kept looted artifacts that would fetch a fortune if sent to the right people and earn a place in a museum that law enforcement would never get to see.

Lisa watched the treasures spill into her brother’s bag and dreamed of wearing every piece at once, drenched in so much money that she could barely walk around for how expensive she was. She’d be smooth like Len someday, and someday she’d steal this much ten times over without breaking a sweat, and she’d wear gold every single night to the fanciest parties her mind could conjure up.

“You, sir, are a goddamn moron,” said a voice from outside the safe room.

Oh, heck.

Len stayed very, very still. The end of a diamond bracelet hovered over the mouth of his bag, quivering as his fingers tensed.

“You could have robbed any rich airhead on this street, and instead you come to me? To steal what’s mine?”

Lisa watched Len take a shallow breath and let the bracelet slip from his fingers to land tinkling in his bag. “I like a challenge,” he said, pitching his voice deeper to disguise it but not sounding particularly perturbed.

A gun appeared in Lisa’s field of view, followed by an arm and then a man in a plush red bathrobe. He had a white mustache and pointy beard that reminded her of the old guy on the Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets, though his expression was far less kindly. “I am going to ruin you in very, very small pieces,” the KFC Man growled. “I don’t care who you are, going to jail will be the least of your problems. I will find your mother, I will find your children, I will find your credit history, and then I’m going to have a few friends of mine on the inside start on your fingernails.” He also made a threat of doing something to Len’s hypothetical girlfriend but Lisa wasn’t sure what the words he used meant. Probably not anything nice.

Len, who didn’t concern himself with any of those things outside of the fingernails, chuckled. “Could you start with my great-uncle? Never particularly cared for the old bastard.”

The gun jerked upwards. “Get your goddamn hands in the air and turn around. We’re gonna go upstairs and have a little chat before I call the cops.”

Len turned, one hand still holding the bag. His leisurely movements made it seem as if he’d chosen to do this of his own volition, stretching to ease a sore back.

“Ladies first,” he said, gesturing towards the door. Instead the KFC Man circled around behind him, gun still up, and then kicked him hard in the ankle.

“March, asshole.”

Lisa saw her future crumble. No Len meant no way to get away from Louis, meant no mansions with cats in ruby collars sleeping on Mick’s broad chest, no fingers covered in gold rings and steak tartare to eat every night with fancy wine. No Len meant not having _Len_. She wasn’t sure what life she’d have left without Len.

Anne Bonney wouldn’t have these problems, Lisa thought. She’d swing down on the ratline with a mighty yell, sword drawn, cursing his lily-livered cuts and avasting his eyes right out of his face, that was the pirate way. ...aAnd a thief was almost like a pirate. Lisa leaned forward and held the wire cutters tight in her fingers, jaws open and shivering in her shaking hands. She waited as Len passed underneath her, and then the gun, and finally the shiny baldness of the scallywag’s shiny head.

“Yarrrr!” she screeched, and tumbled out of the ceiling with all the grace of a barnacle-encrusted rum barrel. KFC Man stumbled as the wire cutters left a long scrape in his scalp, Lisa’s weight not enough to fully topple him until Len’s arm lashed out and punched him in the throat. Lisa rolled away and Len kept punching, over and over with a sound like meat slapping a table, bloodying the rich man and bloodying his own fists until KFC Man was lying in a groaning heap on the floor.

Then, very slowly, Len stood.

“Step ten,” he said, as if absolutely nothing had gone wrong, expression unsettlingly calm. Step ten, up and down. Lisa gave a shaky nod, and let Len scoop her up to hang from his shoulders again when they made it to the study. Bloody hands left streaks on her arms and Lisa pressed her face to Len’s neck to remind herself that he was still here.

Step eleven, Japanese maple. KFC Man didn’t keep trees close enough to the fence to let someone climb over from outside, but inside they were just tall enough to leap from the thickest branch to the top of the fence. Lisa flopped like a dead weight as Len hoisted them both over, trying to fight back images of Len lying dead on the floor like Batman’s parents.

(The next morning she’d be able to laugh again as the papers announced a grand theft and assault-and-battery by two daring crooks, one huge and brutal and one a “hippy midget in a pirate costume”. The police were not entirely taking the case seriously.)

Step twelve, back where we started. When they made it to the car the piggybacking turned into a tight hug that both siblings were reluctant to break, until Len pulled away so he could complete step thirteen and drive them out of the crime scene slow and easy.

“I’m sorry, Len,” said Lisa, breathless and nearly in tears. “I should have watched the door. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have brought me.”

“You’re sorry you saved my ass, then?”

Lisa looked to him with wide eyes, caught between two wrong answers. The kind Dad liked to offer, with no safe way out, to make sure she knew the real answer was ‘I’m in charge here’. Len saw where he’d put her, and put his hand on her shoulder instead.

“Everyone screws up their first heist,” he insisted. “You didn’t get arrested, and that puts you above some of the screw-ups I’ve made. Okay? That was brave. You did good. Say it, okay?”

“I did good,” Lisa repeated, and gave Len’s hand an extra hard squeeze. They drove along in in silence for a long, trembling moment until Len pulled over to let her look at their loot. Nothing cheered you up like seeing more money than some people made in their entire lives running across the palm of your hand.

“They’re beautiful,” said Lisa in awe, slipping an emerald-studded ring onto her finger. “Why’d he keep them locked away like that? If I had them, I’d wear them all the time.”

“I’m sure he takes them out and shows them off, on occasion. Maybe lets his lady friends wear them for a few nights until he gets bored and dumps them off. If you ever find a guy that eager to dump money on you, take him for what he’s worth but don’t bother sticking around.”

“What about you dumping money on me?” Lisa asked, hardly minding the idea.

“I like to consider myself a special breed of gentleman.” Len laughed. He was counting up the diamonds on a thick bracelet and making notes with a blunted pencil on a small sheet of scrap paper. The numbers had a lot of zeroes after them. Lisa ran her fingers over the largest of the diamonds and then, reluctantly, put it back in the bag. Her voice turned more somber.

“Will it be enough money? For…for us to leave?”

Len looked at the thick bracelet in his hand. His sensitive fingers teased each tiny diamond in turn, measuring its price in tears and bruises. “Soon,” he said quietly . “I’m getting everything arranged. A little more time, a little more money. It won’t be much longer”

“I really want to come live with you, Len. Dad’s an asshole.” Dad hit for swearing, never mind that he used the word all the time around her. Girls didn’t swear, and she relished the use of the word.

“I know. Worst kind of asshole is the kind who takes his problems out on someone who can’t fight back.” He reached the end of the diamonds, and raised his head to meet her eyes as he dropped the bracelet back into the bag. “If he does something bad—really bad—don’t worry about the money. Just get your things and get to the next pay phone you can.” he said, firm and intense, hammering the message into her. “We’ll make it work.“

“I know, Len. I know what to do.” She thought of the bug-out bag masquerading as a sparkly Lisa Frank backpack in the back of her closet, its bright unicorns and fairies warding her father off like roach repellant. Granola bars, change of clothes, blonde wig, cash sewn into the inside fabric, fake passport, child-sized shiv. 

“If you need to run, you run. If you can’t find me, you find Mick, and whatever happens we’ll make it work out.”

“I know, Len. He’s not so bad right now. Nothing big’s gone wrong, he hasn’t thrown anything in a while.” But they both knew how fast that could change.

Lisa took a fun-size Hershey bar out of her bag and rolled it between her fingers. She could feel how easily it became warm in her hands, smearing onto fingertips like the blood still drying under Len’s nails. 

Guy’d deserved it, anyway. What a jerk. She passed the bar to Len as reward and took a packet of Runts for herself, setting the gross lime-flavored ones aside for Len to eat. 

“I can probably fence most of these, if I go a few towns over and have someone yank the gems out of their sockets,” Len mused. He held up a necklace with the red gem cut into the shape of a rose blossom. Golden wiring held the gem in place, with thicker gold imitating the stems, leaves, and thorns. “But this one’s a little too unique. Probably can’t move it, at least not for a long time.”

“So what are you going to do with it?” asked Lisa, crunching down on a heart-shaped faux-strawberry.

“Give it to a woman who deserves it.” Light safecracking fingers unlatched the necklace, and then draped it carefully around Lisa’s neck. Lisa breathed in as she felt the cool metal against her skin, and Len twisted the rear view mirror so she could get a better look at herself.

She looked like a princess. A pirate queen wearing her ill-gotten riches. Shaky fingers touched the carved gem, pressing it close to her chest. Len let her admire herself as long as she pleased, until she sadly reached up to remove it.

“You should hang on to it. Dad’ll just take it.”

“I will. Just until I can get you out, and then it’ll be yours. Think of it like a graduation present.”

Hers, forever. So beautiful. One hand squeezed the other when she passed it back until the thorns left dents in her skin.

“Soon.”

Len looked at her like there was nothing more important in the world, with an ache that his gaze at the diamonds couldn’t begin to match. “Yeah, Lisa. Soon.”

It wasn’t until their hands let go that they realized neither of them had been breathing. Len popped one of the lime Runts into his mouth, and made a cracking noise as his teeth split it in half. “Your little loot sack’s looking pretty empty,” he noted.

“I didn’t get too far down the street,” Lisa said.

“When does Dad expect you back?”

Lisa snorted. “He’s probably passed out by now anyway. I don’t think he knows how long trick-or-treating’s supposed to take, he never took me out to do it.”

Len started up the car again and turned it back towards the neighborhoods of the next-tier-down in wealth, where the children in bedsheets and facepaint would still be wandering up the driveways of houses hung with light-up spiders and scarecrows. He handed Lisa back her little sword and cheap plastic earring as Lisa buckled herself in. Her smile was starting to come back.

“Then,” said her brother. “Let’s get a few more heists in before the night’s over.”


End file.
